The Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, with help from stakeholders and professional planners, put together this resource with health-related policies for Official Plans, required of all municipalities in Ontario. Many of these policy recommendations address the provision of walk-friendly environments. Municipalities are free to use the concepts within this document and adapt, amend, or revise the wording to suit their particular needs and circumstances.

This literature review examines the effects of traffic calming in urban environments on four health determinants: • the number and severity of road collisions; • air quality; • environmental noise; • physical activity associated with active transportation.

This link is to a brief primer of the comprehensive manual, which is available for purchase from the Transportation Association of Canada. Based on experiences from across Canada, it identifies a set of 11 principles to guide practitioners and their communities in responding to the diverse challenges of improving active transportation in Canada. The comprehensive “how-to” manual is an excellent resource, containing case studies from across the country and is available for purchase from the TAC Bookstore: http://www.tac-atc.ca/english/bookstore/titles.cfm $$$

Policies to guide development in Ontario’s “Greater Golden Horseshoe” region in order to create complete communities that offer more options for living, working, learning, shopping, and playing while reducing traffic gridlock by providing more sustainable transportation options.

This document is useful in providing tools and strategies to create a more compact land-use pattern supportive of walking and cycling, optimize the effectiveness of existing or future transit services, retain ridership and better target transit service. In mid-size or larger cities, the guideline will help to better utilize existing infrastructure, grow ridership and manage urban growth in a more transit-supportive manner.

The adoption of a Complete Streets policy requires planners and engineers to design roadways to be safe and comfortable for users of all ages and abilities, including pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users.

This research represents the first known in Canada highlighting the opportunities and barriers for the adoption of Complete Streets policies. More specifically, the transportation section of the Official Plan (OP) for 17 of Ontario’s largest municipalities was analysed using the ten elements of a comprehensive Complete Streets policy developed by the National Complete Streets Coalition.

Richmond Hill Parking Strategy (example of an Ontario municipality developing a comprehensive strategy that “recognizes the need to provide residents and businesses with parking supply sufficient to meet the needs of the growing and vibrant community, while at the same time using the provision of parking supply quotas and other parking supply measures as a tool to selectively manage travel demand, discourage auto use, support, where appropriate, higher transit use and influence auto ownership choices.”